Deere and Cargill say “Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto” – Artificial intelligence infiltrating agriculture and farming

Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere nowadays and not just in high tech labs, science centers, or nerdy dark basements. They are now in our agriculture industry and on our farms, and even in our yards with John Deere’s new robotic lawnmower.  In fact, the Mr. Roboto’s song lyrics eerily said “Thank you very much, Mr. Roboto, for doing the jobs that nobody wants to,” which is just what many of these smart agricultural machines are doing, like data collection, seeding, irrigating, crop analysis and other tasks that take humans too much time, energy and money to do.  John Deere announced they are buying Blue River Technology, a Sunnyvale, California company that specializes and is amazingly smart in artificial intelligence for agriculture. It isn’t coming cheap at $305 million, but Deere is focused on expanding their automation technologies and artificial intelligence product offerings.“We welcome the opportunity to work with a Blue River Technology team that is highly skilled and intensely dedicated to rapidly advancing the implementation of machine learning in agriculture,” said John May, President, Agricultural Solutions, and Chief Information Officer at Deere in their press release. “As a leader in precision agriculture, John Deere recognizes the importance of technology to our customers. Machine learning is an important capability for Deere’s future.”In particular, Blue River Technology applied machine learning to agricultural spraying equipment and Deere is confident that similar technology can be used in the future on a wider range of products, May said.Blue River designed and integrated computer vision and machine learning technology that will enable growers to reduce the use of herbicides by spraying only where weeds are present, optimizing the use of inputs in farming – a key objective of precision agriculture.Deere isn’t the only company expanding and investing in artificial intelligence. Cargill recently announced that dairy productivity increased in European markets that used their Dairy Enteligen application and they plan to expand it to the U.S. within the next several months. The tool helps farmers and consultants analyze tons of data and information on the cows via smart tablets and computers.“In today’s agricultural economy, dairy farmers are looking for real-time information and insights inpage-dairy-enteligen-screen to help them make the best decisions to run a profitable and efficient farm, while also ensuring their animals are properly nourished,” Ricardo Daura, global product line director in Cargill Animal Nutrition’s digital insights business said in their press release. “We believe Dairy Enteligen has the power to fundamentally transform the dairy industry by unlocking the power of data to guide farmers’ decision-making right from their fingertips.”Through the touch of a smart tablet or a computer keystroke, dairy consultants work with farmers to track key information, including milk productivity, animal health and comfort and feed formulation. The Dairy Enteligen data collection, management and analysis platform combines this information from multiple software programs into one system, allowing Cargill advisors and customers to make precise decisions on feed and farm management practices.